I inadvertantly cut someone off in traffic yesterday, and I felt terrible about it all day.

I really wonder what kind of psycological mechanisms someone like Yoo must employ to live with this stuff. I couldn't do it, I couldn't take it.

I guess that's why I'm a dirty fucking hippie and he's a law professor.

If John Yoo were such a war criminal, why would UC Berkeley have him on the faculty of their law school?

Unless Berkeley Law fires John Yoo, all decent, reasonable, mild-mannered, controversy-avoiding Americans must reject Glenn Greenwald's wild claims about "torture," "war crimes," "standing violation of international treaty," "massive affront to human dignity," "degradation of the values of the American republic," and all of that other nonsense.

And of course, Berkeley shouldn't ever fire Yoo because he hasn't done anything wrong. How do we know? Because he's a Berkeley Law professor!

You say "insane circular logic," I say "tomahto."

A foreign journalist on assignment, a family man snatched from his home in middle America, another 'disappeared' at the airport, a foreign citizen detained and likewise 'disappeared'.

If there's any justice in the universe, Professor Yoo will likewise 'disappear' into the monstrous system he helped create.

Beyond this, what more can one say?

What troubles me more is that John Yoo is a professor at a law school and not the fake, bottom rung 'christian' law school that hatched so many authoritarian freaks in the Bush justice department (unless I don't remember clearly).

What kind of lesson can students learn from such a stilted and bizarre man that would use smantecs and obfuscation to build and sustain a case. Especially when everyone knows that it's completely false.

Yoo is damaged goods and anything he touches should be suspect.

To emply him in the education of other attorneys is just wrong.

Glenn, you just don't understand. To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. As long as those eggs are of the foreign (or foreign-sounding) and generally non-white variety, really, what's the bother?

Our Dear Leader in Washington - with the able assistance of dedicated shock worker legal scholars like John Yoo - is helping us build a glorious future free of the terrible burden of thinking about all this stuff. Everyone is created equal (though some more equal than others) and we have always been at war with Eurasia.

Why can't you just get on the bus?

huge bulk of our "War on Terror" prisoners, including those at Guantanamo, were not "captured fighting against the U.S." at all.

Certainly that you must realize that the phrase "fighting against the US" includes thinking bad thoughts about it or obtaining information that would be useful IF you wished to fight against the US. Certainly the 'preemptive war" logic that allowed us to attack Iraq necessitates that we preemptively detain people who might allow their bad thoughts to morph into bad actions.

Needless to say, subjecting those people to stress positions, sexual humiliation and waterboarding is just what the doctor ordered in order to prevent those bad thoughts from being acted upon.

You just don't have the solid understanding of the terrorist mind that Yoo and the administration possess.

If only there were a group of people ... nay, let us dream big ... if only there were an entire professional class of well-trained and dedicated people who would actually investigate claims such as the ones endlessly repeated by Yoo and his ilk. And during and after such investigations, perhaps they could report on what they found in regularly-published chronicles. Those chronicles could be purchased by everyday citizens, eager to educate themselves in the topics of the day, both as matter of personal curiousity and as part of their civic duty.

Oh, I know, it's a totally unrealistic fantasy. But I can dream, can't I?

But the two glaring falsehoods in today's Op-Ed -- that habeas protections protect "Al Qaeda terrorists" and that Guantanamo detainees were captured on the battlefield -- are precisely the ones that have been used for so long to obscure the real dangers of empowering our Government with the authority of lawless imprisonment. -- Glenn Greenwald

Do you have proof that there are NO AlQaeda or battlefield combatants affected by this ruling as Yoo indicates? If not, then your statement here is false and his is true. I would think it more likely that both of you are partially correct.

Why not try the true middle course rather than indulge in untrue absolutes? It's a more serious approach.

I note from the Berkley Law School website that Yoo has been a professor there since the 1990ies, before he became infamous at the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, so it would seem likely he had tenure before that, and so remains secure in his position no matter what.

At least as worrying is that his course load includes Constitutional Law and - wait for it -Separation of Powers Law. Like giving an arsonist a blowtorch.

so little time. I'm sure Berekley must be very proud of their little lying fascist freak.

I remember the good old days, when a person, no matter who or what for or where they were detained, when charged by the state with wrong-doing, always enjoyed the presumption of innocence until guilt was established through due process.

Seems like so long ago now...

How the fuck did we get here?

Why did the US sink into a police state with nary a whisper from most of its citizens?

And how do we get back?

Is it too late?

Glenn asks

The whole point of the habeas corpus right is that without a meaningful hearing, we don't know if the individuals our Government is imprisoning are really "al Qaeda terrorists" or something else.

Exactly! Without a hearing, we don't know that they aren't, either!

And by assuming without evidence or charge that the detained are guilty terrorists, it automagically makes us that much more successful in the waronterra!!!

Hah! Out of touch liberals with your 'technicalities' and your fancy-pants "Constitution" and whatnot!